Love Songs

Does this film defy genre classification? It is a musical, but it's narrative is a melodramatic one about coping with the death of a lover. Yet it's about the love that blooms after the tragedy, so is a romantic film. Lastly, throw in some homoeroticism, and this ambitiously artistic film moves and intrgues with its endless originality and intellectual and artistic challenges.

Christophe Honores seems to have single handedly resuscitated a dying French Film Scene, however without "going hollywood" as the industry tried (unsuccessfully for the past decade and a half). He has maintained a high level of "art house" cinema, while still being accessible and entertaining.

"A man tries to cope with the sudden death of his girlfriend." Starring Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, Brigitte Rouan. Directed by Christophe Honore. From France. 2007. 95 mins.

Movies about Making Movies (or About Hollywood)

The Player (1992)

Mistress (1992)

Hijacking Hollywood (1997)

Swimming with Sharks (1994)

Permanent Midnight (1998)

Get Shorty (1995)

update--> Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Second Best

Three Times

Perhaps not the best movie to take someone on a date, I was floored by the film, but I was already a fan of the director. The date was pretty bored. The silent segments were because the actors couldn't get the Shanghainese accent straight. Yet that segment's emotional impact is not dulled at all.


"Three love stories take place in different eras." Starring Shu Qi, Mei Fang, Liao Su-jen, Di Mei, Shi-Zheng Chen. Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Taiwan. 2005. 130 mins.

Dream for a New Year

Last night I had a very interesting, telling, and hopefully premonitory (portentous) dream!

I was with a group of other young people like we were in a cliched horror film. I think they were a few girls I went to school in Germany with. However, we were trapped in an old building much like you'd find on the Berkeley campus.

The problem was much like in "13 Ghosts" or "Silent Hill" where you think you can leave, but in fact "reality" itself will trap you in (even when you think you've escaped you haven'). Of course, it starts out with convoluted hallways, that alter and change course as you go through it, not letting you out. Then at one point we escaped out a "side way" but were then tricked into going back in, thinking "We were just trippin' it's not REALLY a trick, haunted building!"

but once lured back in we realized we were trapped again. However, through sheer belief in myself, due to the fact that the entire time we actually WERE trapped I never lost hope or faith in my ability to get out. Likewise, this final time when we got "re"-trapped, while the others fretted, i confidently strode out, and as the others were "sucked" back in, i escaped knowingly. then i woke.

I never felt a sense of being trapped or that i wouldn't make it out.

I hope this portends of the coming year. That all the pitfalls of life will fall away like nothing, no matter how "mysterious" or "otherworldly" my hindrances, obstacles, and barriers might be!